Denver church deacon gunned down in road rage incident

Posted By
Kirk Mitchell
On
December 8, 2012 @ 10:45 am
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City of Denver |
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Alonzo Rufus Witherspoon was a well-respected church deacon at Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in Denver and had served in the military. He was 65.

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Alonzo Rufus Witherspoon, 65

Clementus Cletus Williams, the son of parents both serving prison terms, was out on bail on a robbery arrest of a grocery store in Aurora. He was 15.

Witherspoon had been known for counseling kids like Williams at his church. But on Sept. 13, 2000, he and Williams allegedly clashed in a brief road rage incident on 29th Avenue and Adams Street.

Witherspoon was shot to death in an apparant road rage incident.

Authorities believed so strongly that Williams was responsible that they arrested him and then-district attorney Bill Ritter charged him as an adult with first degree murder.

But Williams was not found guilty of murder, nor was he acquitted. He didn’t even have a trial at all.

All charges against the boy were dismissed when Ritter announced that there was insufficient evidence to go forward with the trial.

A key witness refused to talk to police. Her decision apparently trumped all evidence collected by crime analysts and homicide detectives.

Ritter vowed that if new evidence was uncovered leading to a suspect, charges could be filed again.

What it means is that Witherspoon’s case – once considered solved – is a cold case. Ritter moved on to the governor’s mansion after finishing his terms as district attorney.

A dozen years have passed. Witherspoon’s case remains unsolved. The family of Witherspoon still have no legal resolution.

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Pallbearers carry the casket of Alonzo Witherspoon following services at Mount Carmel Community Baptist Church, where he was a deacon on Sept. 19, 2000Photo by Denver Post photographer Glenn Asakawa

The story of the deacon’s death in a chance road rage incident became a big story in Denver. A recounting of what happened through the words of Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News reports gives insight into what went wrong in the case.

Williams’ life hadn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination.

He was only 5 when his parents began using drugs, according to his grandmother, who spoke with a reporter. Their addictions would lead to separations and violence. His father once struck his mother with a gun outside a crack house and he had choked her another time.

In 1993, his aunt Toni Marie Sweed was stabbed to death.

By the time he was 15, his father, Cletus Harlon Williams Jr., then 42, was at Arrowhead Correctional Facility in Canon City for assaulting his mother. His mother, Pamela Anne Jones, 39, was in prison serving a six-year sentence for aggravated robbery.

After his parents were convicted of felony crimes, Williams sometimes lived with his “Auntie” and grandmother, but he also lived on the street. He attended East High School off and on.

His grandmother Sandra Williams would describe him as “a good kid,” who attended accelerated classes. But she acknowledged, “he had a hard time.”

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Clementus Williams – H.S. yearbook copy photo from East High School

Williams also had a juvenile record for aggravated robbery and drug possession.

He was arrested on Feb. 20, 2000 following a stickup of a Safeway store at 12200 E. Mississippi Ave. On that day a police officer saw him standing in the store with a gun in one hand and a white plastic bag filled with money in the other. When he saw the officer he ran outside and jumped into a car with three other suspects.

He was released on a $30,000 bond.

Witherspoon lived at 3001 Garfield St. He had the same girlfriend for 13 years, Annette Lewter. He taught Ahmad Lewter how to play basketball and football.

Witherspoon had been a light heavyweight boxer at a club at Lowry Air Force Base.

He had worked as a clerical assistant in the purchasing department for the city of Aurora and also owned a business called Spoon’s Janitorial Service.

Witherspoon had been attending Mount Carmel Community Baptist Church for 20 years and had often counseled youths. He’d engage them by talking about sports, then weave in lessons about life.

“I want everybody to know that he wasn’t the kind of person that somebody would shoot, that somebody would want to kill,” Lewter told a reporter at the time.

Ahmad Lewter, then 16, would tell a reporter that he considered Witherspoon a surrogate father.

“He taught me so many things,” Lewter had said. “He always told me that if somebody hurts you, you don’t want to hurt them back. You need to pray for them. They are the ones who are suffering.”

In the early Wednesday evening of Sept. 13, 2000, Witherspoon told his sister-in-law Alberta Stewart that he had prayed for the Lord’s help because he was having financial trouble. Miraculously, a woman had called and promised to put off foreclosure on his home. His prayers had been answered.

Students there said Williams himself was spreading the word – boasting.

“Cle” had allegedly told a 17-year-old classmate that Witherspoon had been asking for church donations at a nearby 7-Eleven. It made him angry and he shot him, put his body in his car and drove to the location where he was found, according to one newspaper account. The account was laced with inaccuracies.

The student said Williams once threatened to shoot a teacher who reprimanded him in geometry class.

Community activist Alvertis Simmons got involved by trying to get the suspect to turn himself in to police.

“He’s scared,” Simmons told a reporter at the time. “His mama’s in prison, and his father is in prison. He leads a hard life, but that doesn’t mean it’s right to take a life. This is a tragedy all the way around.”

But Williams would claim he had an alibi. He was at a storage facility at 5005 E. Evans Ave. in southeast Denver between 7:23 p.m. and 7:32 p.m. on the night of the murder. The manager of the facility confirmed it, saying that Williams was with his girlfriend Shamakia Marie Wright, then 22 at the time.

At 2 p.m. on Sept. 19, Williams walked into the Denver Police Department headquarters and surrendered. He told police that although he had been in the stolen Cavilier that night he didn’t shoot anybody.

“I never thought about killing nobody,” he told a reporter in a phone conversation from Gilliam Youth Services Center, where he was being held. “I had my whole life in front of me.”

He said he believes he was arrested because he was seen in a different red car.

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Clementus Williams, 15, mug shot following arrest as adult in connection with shooting of Alonzo Witherspoon

“They are just trying to pin this on me because I was driving a red car. I was in a black neighborhood where the gang unit always sweats me,” he said during the same phone interview. “I’m not an evil type of a person.”

Former police Lt. Jon Priest was quoted as saying that a person who was in the car with Williams was cooperating. That person was later identified as Williams’ girlfriend.

The next week the DA’s office charged Williams with first degree murder.

Two months later though, Ritter’s office asked a judge to dismiss the charge.

According to court records, Williams’ girlfriend refused to talk to police. Ritter said he intended to convene a grand jury. He said a grand jury could compell a witness to speak.